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Lesbian and Gay History

Lori Ginzberg Hist 466/WS 466

410 Weaver Spring 2005

863-8947 LDG1@psu.edu

Office hours: Wednesday, 9-11

This course will explore both “classic” and more recent writings on the history of sexuality, focusing on the experiences, ideas, and conflicts that have shaped modern gay and lesbian identities. It will explore such questions as: What is the lesbian and gay past? How have historians recovered the stories of lesbians and gay men who lived in societies and eras vastly different from our own? What can we learn from history about gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community? We will use films, primary and secondary readings, discussions, and written assignments to to begin to answer these and other questions.

The success of this course depends on everyone’s informed presence. Therefore, attendance and active participation in class will be a major part of your grade.

Class meets on Tuesdays, from 4:15-6:45 in 208 Willard. Please be prompt.

The following books are available at the Student Bookstore.

George Chauncey, Gay New York

Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, George Chauncey, Hidden from History

Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex

Kathy Peiss, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality

Written Requirements

In addition to expanding our knowledge of lesbian and gay history, this course will stress critical reading, research, and writing skills. The following are the assignments for undergraduate and graduate students

I: UNDERGRADUATES

Each undergraduate student will write six 2-3 page response essays on a particular week’s readings, a response to a graduate student’s rough draft, plus a 6-8-page review essay in lesbian and gay history (due the Tuesday of finals week). The due dates for the papers are marked with a # sign below.

II: GRADUATE STUDENTS

Each graduate student will do a research paper. Over the course of the semester each of you will develop a research goal, use primary and secondary sources, receive comments on a rough draft, present your findings at a final conference, and submit a paper of 20-25 pages. The following schedule will be strictly observed:

1. Consultation with me on your research idea by February 2

2. A typed proposal, including the central questions, a plan for research, and a preliminary bibliography, due February 22

3. A rough draft of the paper, due March 29

4. Presentations at our final conference on April 26.

5. A final draft (due the Tuesday of finals week)

Grades will be based half on class participation and half on the written assignments. Late assignments will be graded down.

You must complete all the work to pass the course.

Note: The course is far from comprehensive in scope. For additional readings you might look to the unassigned articles in Hidden from History or Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality. Interested students should also become familiar with Gay Community News, off our backs, Out/Look, Philadelphia Gay News, The Advocate, Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends. For more scholarly articles I recommend Signs, Feminist Studies, Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Journal of Homosexuality, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND CLASSES:

Jan. 11: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

FILM: “BEFORE STONEWALL”

Jan. 18: WHAT IS LESBIAN AND GAY HISTORY?

“Introduction,” Hidden from History, 1-13

Jeffrey Weeks, “The Social Construction of Sexuality,” in Peiss, Major Problems, 2-9

This study supplements the idea of the inscription of sodomitical acts into a homosexual label at the end of the nineteenth century by teasing out the ways in which men who desired sex with men in Britain had expressed such interests through parody, clothing, and deportment since the mid-eighteenth century.

Host of the first gay pride in the Sinophone world, Taiwan is well-known for its mushrooming of liberal attitudes towards non-normative genders and sexualities after the lifting of Martial Law in 1987. Perverse Taiwan is the first collection of its kind to contextualize that development from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on its genealogical roots, sociological manifestations, and cultural representations.EndFragment

Lavender and Red recounts the history of queer radicals who saw sexual liberation as intertwined with solidarity against imperialism, racism, and war. Hobson examines the gay and lesbian left in the San Francisco Bay Area from the height of the 1960s through the depths of the AIDS epidemic and end of the Cold War.

Shifting the story from San Francisco and New York to the more representative Chicago, Queer Clout weaves together activism and electoral politics in tracing the path of gays and lesbians from the closet to the corridors of power.

How will we archive the vibrant lesbian cultural spaces of the 1970s, 80s and 90s? Bookstores, bars, and concert spaces are vanishing as physical sites and from recent memory. This volume explores the rise and fall of events and spaces built by and for lesbians in the era of woman-identified activism.

"The sheer act of Downs' acknowledging that not all gay men subscribed to the popular ‘three Big Bs’ of the time—‘the Bars, Beaches, and Baths’—and found their identity validated and articulated through the communal practices of Christian worship and cultural hubs is a refreshing and invigorating experience. Stand By Me proves a deeply moving read."

This volume places pornography at the heart of the 1970s American experience, exploring lesser-known forms of pornography from the decade, such as a new, vibrant gay porn genre; transsexual/female impersonator magazines; and pornography for new users, including women and conservative Christians.

The history of the modern sciences has long overlooked the significance of domesticity as a physical, social, and symbolic force in the shaping of knowledge production. This book provides a welcome reorientation to our understanding of the making of the modern sciences globally by emphasizing the centrality of domesticity in diverse scientific enterprises.

Lesbian Decadence, by Nicole G. Albert, now available in English for the first time, provides a new analysis and synthesis of the depiction of lesbianism as a social phenomenon and a symptom of social malaise as well as a fantasy in that most vibrant place and period in history.

coverWileyA Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era presents a collection of new historiographic essays covering the years between 1877 and 1920, a period which saw the U.S. emerge from the ashes of Reconstruction to become a world power.

"This meticulously researched book explores how changing patterns of youth, adulthood, geography, and gender have shaped American norms and expectations of youthful marriage. Made human by his telling of richly detailed personal stories, Nicholas Syrett's findings will surprise and likely shock contemporary readers."

Drawing on a rich array of source materials including previously unseen oral histories, 'Curing queers' examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive 'treatment' for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It makes a significant and substantial contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of nursing, bringing together two sub-disciplines that combine only infrequently.

Included in The Complete Works of Pat Parker are Parker’s masterwork, Movement in Black, as well as Jonestown & other madness. Parker’s prose writing is collected in The Complete Works along with two unpublished plays and a number of previously uncollected poems.